FIG. 1 is an exemplary illustration of a conventional legal case citation. A legal case citation may include a plurality of constituent components such as, for example: a first party field 102, a versus field 104, a second party field 106, a reporter volume number field 108, a reporter abbreviation field 110, an initial page 112 and a court and date of decision field 114.
Many times a list of the citations to authority appearing within a document is desired. The list of citations may include, for example, a Table of Authorities (“TOA”), endnotes, a bibliography, a table, a chart, a list, or other summarizing feature for citations. For example, most U.S. federal, state, and local courts, federal and state agencies, and other tribunals require briefs to include a Table of Authorities which is a table of cases, statutes and other authorities listed alphabetically with references to the pages of the brief where they are cited.
Various word processing applications, such as Microsoft Word®, have features that enable a user to manually mark citations found in the word processing document as a TA (Table of Authorities Entry) field code, and that automatically generate a TOA based on those codes. This process is often time consuming and error-prone, however, because it requires the person marking the document to not only have advanced knowledge of how to mark the document, but also to have familiarity with the myriad of rules and exceptions defined, for example, in the The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation or in other citation systems.
A number of commercially available software applications exist that enable a user to automatically generate a TOA for citations within an electronic document. In many such systems, a key-word searching mechanism is used to locate known reporters, jurisdiction or court clauses to identify citations in a document. U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,028,259 and 7,003,719, each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, describe known citation identification processes of this kind.
Several drawbacks may be associated with use of the known art. For example, the known algorithms usually require a legal citation software application to analyze each word in a document. Consequently, determining valid citations in the document may be time-consuming, depending on the length and complexity of the document. Additionally, key-word searching algorithms can become long, complicated, and difficult to maintain (especially if the original programmers are no longer available to consult on revisions). Hence, changes in the citation systems or in the programming language can result in extensive code changes. Moreover, the known algorithms may be written in a programming language that is specific to a certain platform and may not be easily portable to another platform (without incurring significant costs, for example, to rewrite code).
FIGS. 2-4 each illustrate examples of a TOA that may be generated by a commercially available software application. For ease of explanation, the TOA generated by each software application is located along the top portion of each figure (200, 300, 400). In FIGS. 2 and 4, following the three asterisks (in each figure) are two exemplary paragraphs of text in an electronic document, having actual legal citations contained therein (201, 401). These citations are shown, for clarity, in alternating shading colors.
FIG. 2 depicts a portion of an exemplary TOA 200 generated using CiteLink®, a software application marketed by West Publishing, for a legal document including the displayed text. Citation 202 is to a United Nations document. A review of the TOA 200 at the top of FIG. 2, however, shows that CiteLink® was unable to identify this as a citation. Citation 204 is to a treaty to which the United States is a party. Field Code 206 is an accompanying Microsoft Word® field code inserted by CiteLink®. Field Codes are normally used, for example, in generating the TOA. Referring to citation 208 in TOA 200, CiteLink® was apparently successful in recognizing the complete citation corresponding to citation 204 in the text 201. Citation 210 is to another treaty, in this instance the treaty title is fairly long. Field Code 212 is the accompanying Microsoft Word® field code inserted by CiteLink®. However, the corresponding citation 214 in the TOA 200 shows that CiteLink® was unable to recognize the full name of the treaty and is therefore incorrect. Continuing further, it is evident that many of the other citations in the document text (shown in FIG. 2) are either incomplete in (or missing from) TOA 200.
Moreover, CiteLink® has created an extraneous “13” category subheading 216, which appears to be an unnamed TOA category. It appears as though CiteLink® did not know what to name the category, so a default number was chosen. For example, Microsoft Word® (by default) contains sixteen TOA categories. All sixteen categories are numbered, with the first categories having common standard names (e.g., cases, statutes, etc). Further, the categories can have their names changed or names assigned to them. This can be done manually or in an automated fashion.
FIG. 3 depicts an exemplary TOA 300 (for the same text shown in FIG. 2) generated by FullAuthority®, a software application marketed by LexisNexis, using the “any reference” feature. In this figure, the document text portion is missing because FullAuthority® creates a stand-alone TOA, which is separate from the electronic document. In addition, no field codes are used in this process. The citation 302 in TOA 300 shows that FullAuthority® has correctly identified this citation to a session law corresponding to citation 218 in the document text (of FIG. 2). Citation 304 in TOA 300 also shows that FullAuthority® has correctly identified the citation to a book entitled “The Logic of Collective Action,” in the document text (of FIG. 2). However, referring to the “UNRECOGNIZED” category subheading 306 of the TOA 300, there are a number of the citations contained therein that are either incomplete or missing.
FIG. 4A depicts an exemplary TOA 400 generated using Best Authority®, a software application marketed by Levitt & James, using Best Authority's “Basic Common” scheme with the “US and international cases” option checked for the Dictionary section. Citation 402 is the United Nations document referenced in the document text. Field Code 404 is the accompanying field code inserted by Best Authority®. Best Authority® inserts field codes that are modified Microsoft Word® field codes, which are proprietary, thus rendering these field codes unusable to second-party users not owning a version of Best Authority®. Referring to citation 406 in TOA 400, Best Authority® has recognized only a portion of the full name of citation 402 in the document text. Citation 408 is to a treaty to which the United States is a party. Field Code 410 is the accompanying proprietary field code inserted by Best Authority®. Referring to the “SUSPECTS” category subheading 420 of the TOA 400, for the citation 412 in the TOA 400, it can be seen that Best Authority® was only able to recognize “32 U.S.,” while the remaining portion of the citation is missing. Finally, citation 414 (FIG. 4B) is to another treaty, and in this instance, the name of the treaty is rather long. According to field code 416 (FIG. 4B), Best Authority® was only able to recognize portions of the citation 414 (FIG. 4B), such portions being referred to by citations 418 in the TOA 400. Further study of FIGS. 4A and 4B shows that the many of the remaining citations are either incomplete or missing altogether.
In reviewing FIGS. 2-4, it is evident that the existing citation software applications lack a consistent level of accuracy, and completeness in recognizing and identifying various citations including, for example, lengthy and complex source strings for generating a list of citations.